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User blog:Golden8King/Ni No Kuni Review
Hi, everybody, it's me, Golden8King. If you checked out my profile lately, you might have noticed my Top 10 Best Games of All Time list. If you didn't, here it is again: : 10. Super Mario Sunshine (NGC) : 9. Kingdom Hearts II (PS2) : 8. The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (HD) (NGC / WiiU - doesn't matter) : 7. Xenoblade Chronicles (Wii) : 6. Mario Kart Wii (Wii) : 5. Blue Dragon (X360) : 4. Tales of Xillia 2 (PS3) : 3. Pokémon Black 2 White 2 (NDS) : 2. Banjo-Kazooie (N64) : 1. Ni NO KUNI: Wrath of the White Witch (PS3) For a little backstory. Up until a few weeks ago, Banjo-Kazooie has always been my favorite game of all time. I played it again and again and again and again (Tom Kenny says with a french accent: 100 years later) and again. It was my childhood, it was just perfection. But said few weeks ago, I've finished my fourth playthrough through Ni No Kuni. No other games have such an effect on me that I play them multiple times. Most of them, I only play once and then put them on the shelf. But these two, just nailed it - perfectly. But this isn't the Banjo-Kazooie review or BK versus NNK, that's the Ni No Kuni review! So let's get reviewing. Ni No Kuni is one of these games for me that are good and I knew it the second I saw it. In fact, the game simply got my attention due to their developers Level-5 which I like to call Jesus or the japanese Rare (except, when they do Inazuma Eleven games, they aren't bad, I just hate soccer). Then I watched some gameplay and immediately got attached to it. During this time, it was still years till its western release and it was on the Nintendo DS, not PS3. It got even better when Namco Bandai AKA the Publishers announced a Collector's Edition. As all Collector's Editions, I preordered it online (because most of the stores around here are ... meh, nobody would want to pay 100 bugs for that). It came on the day of its release with a copy of the game, a plush toy of Mr. Drippy AKA this game's Navi (but not in a bad way) and a copy of The Wizard's Companion (a book that includes all spells and monster bios). As a "Collector", that's totally what I want from a Collector's Edition - no artbooks or soundtracks, you can find all of this on the internet these days). Anyway, now that we've got the story of how I got that game done, let's get right to the story. Without spoiling this for you, here's just the basic plot: After an incident, Oliver (the protagonist)'s mother dies and he locks himself up in his room (as he only has his mother as family) for days. But suddenly, the plush toy his mom made for him comes to live and introduces himself: Drippy, a fairy from the Other World. Drippy tells Oliver of the Other World, a paralell dimension to the real world. He explains that in the Other World, every person from the real world exists in one form or another and that there might be a way to resurrect (or as the game puts it, "save") his mother, Oliver has to travel to the Other World and find his mother's counterpart. Drippy goes on introducing magic to Oliver. For example, the two find the Wizard's Companion in the chimney and get a wand out of a wooden stick. Oliver then casts a portal to the Other World and so an (at least if you ask me) epic and heart-warming adventure begins. The gameplay is pretty much how you expect an rpg (this is an rpg if this isn't clear) to work: You travel the World Map, explore towns, dungeons and other places and, of course, battle monsters. However, you can tame these monsters and make them your Familiars. Familiars have their own stats and capabilities and may even level up (just like your team members) and even evolve. Unlike Pokémon, however, members also take part in battles and fight alongside their up to three Familiars. This battle mode is pretty much round-based, especially since Oliver, the main protagonist, is mostly used to cast spells as he is the main wizard in the group. You can, however, switch between characters as, for example, only Esther can tame monsters into Familiars. A huge part of the gameplay also resolves around one and the same type of puzzles: Emotion Manipulation!! Yep, you manipulate emotions. You "harvest" as I like to call it, emotions from emotionally people (for example, a person who cries too much) and give the emotion to another one. This usually makes both of them happy. Most of this, however, are simply sidequests but emotions are also a huge part of the story but that's up to you to discover. A small minus are the minigames here and there. They are a bit dumb and complicated. But there are only a few of them. Anyway, onto the main point of the game: The atmosphere. Most critics say that it feels like an interactive Studio Ghibli movie. Heck, Ghibli even did the anime sequences for the game. The story is very much like a Studio Ghibli story and a huge part of the atmosphere cake take the many unique characters and towns. For example, the first town you enter is ruled by a fat cat who constantly fights off the Mouse King (an early boss in the game). Another example is the Queen of a desert oasis town who is a gigantic, really really, Studio Ghibli-like huge cow. A crazy, and my favorite town in the entire game - by far - is a beach town (I love beach towns in general) where it's law to wear swimsuits! Swimsuits! You can't believe how surprised I was when I first heard about this. The simple reason is that "people can't hide weapons in swimsuits". This game is just pure magic - in all the way you can understand this! It's just an atmostphere that makes you say "I'll be having a lot of fun with you". No really, I said that the moment I had my tutorial battle. It just felt like a home coming to a home I didn't know I had. It was the feeling I remembered having as a kid when I first got my jiggy in Banjo-Kazooie. It's funny, still it has a tragic and surprising story. Of course, it has a simply breath-taking soundtrack, beautiful graphics and a day-night-cycle that feels so real that I just stood there and looked at it. I can tell you that this atmosphere is beyond words, beyond comprehension. You simply have to feel it on your own. Sadly, this is one of these games that are great, both said so by gamers and reviewers, yet didn't become a hit. Like Okami. You have a PS3 (I mean, of course you do, this is the PSASBR Wiki, after all), and any interest in rpgs or simply atmosphere. And if you don't take it from me, watch some videos on youtube or read some other reviews. For me, this is the game I love and wouldn't Tales of Xillia 2 be release in a week, I would stand up, go to my PS3, put the disc in and start another adventure with Oliver, Esther, Drippy, Swaine and company. 10/10, 100%, A+++, five stars, just the best rating imaginable. Bye!! xD xD Category:Blog posts